The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  “There are, my dear—but with so many of them and so much of their manufacturing out in space, the surface dwellers have all the room they want, and can afford. They gather around hubs like the one we just left, that distribute everything they need. The wealthier you are, the farther out you live. KR lives quite a way out.”

  “Is he rich, then?”

  “Rich?” Elsevier chuckled. “Oh, filthy rich .... It all should have been TJ’s, he was the oldest; but he was censured and stripped of his rank for his scandalous behavior. I’m sure he did it on purpose, he loathed the whole caste system. But not KR; he was always a supporter of the status quo. He and TJ didn’t even speak.”

  “Then why would he want to see us?” Moon moved uneasily.

  “He’ll see us, have no fear.” The enigmatic smile touched her face again. “Don’t let me make you think badly of him; he’s a very good man, he simply lives by a different set of values.”

  “All Kharemoughis are intolerant,” Cress said. “Only they’re intolerant about different things.”

  “KR came to TJ’s funeral; and he told me that he knew he owed everything he had, and was, to TJ, who had given it all up. He said that if I ever needed anything, I had only to ask.”

  “How did TJ die?” hesitantly.

  “It was his heart. Passing through the Black Gates puts a strain on the human body, on the heart. And disappointment puts a strain on the heart.” She glanced away, out and down, at the greens and the dusky reds of the rolling forest land. Immense knobs of gray rock pushed up through the trees now, like thick, stubby fingers; houses clung precariously to the tips and sides. “It was very sudden. I hope that I, too, may be taken by surprise.”

  They were dropping down again now, into the grounds of a large estate; skimming above paintings laid out on the land in beds of glorious blooms, shrubs trained to mimic strange creatures, fragile summerhouses wrapped in mazes of hedge. The pilot set them down on the flagstoned landing terrace before the main house, a structure the size of a meeting hall, but all curves and hummocks and gentle slopes covered with vines, imitating the land itself. There were many windows, many of them filled with colored glass, repeating the forms and hues of the art gardens. Gaping at the house, Moon saw the great frescoed doors begin to open.

  “You want me to wait, citizens?” The pilot hung an arm across the edge of his seat back, looking skeptical.

  “That won’t necessary be.” Elsevier passed him her credit card coolly; Moon climbed out with the others.

  “Looks like just the spot for a day in the country.” Cress stretched his arms.

  “Many.” Silky turned slowly where he stood, looking back and down over the tiers of gardens.

  Elsevier led them to the entrance. A dignified middle-aged woman with pale freckles and a silver ring piercing one nostril stood waiting for them; she wore a simple white robe wrapped by a wide sash, covered by strand on strand of heavy turquoise jewelry. “Aunt Elsevier, what an unexpected surprise.” Moon was not certain if the gracious smile that included them all went any deeper than her skin.

  “Hardly unexpected,” Elsevier murmured. “One of the inventions that made my father-in-law’s fortune was a system that screens callers electronically ... Hello, ALV, dear,” in Sandhi. “How nice that our visits coincide. I’ve a friend your father to see brought.”

  She touched Moon’s arm. “I hope he well is.” Moon noticed that she did not use the familiar thy.

  “Fine, thank you; but at the moment the physicist Darjeengeshkrad is him consulting.” She ushered them into the cool interior, closing the doors. Light from the stained glass panels on either side fragmented Moon’s vision, softened her sudden awareness of their group incongruity. “Let me you comfortable make until he’s through.” She gestured them on down the hall; Moon noticed that her fingernails were long, and had been filed into sculptures.

  She took them through a series of rising rooms into one where the wide, color-banded window overhung the painted gardens. ALV pressed one of a series of controls in the wall inset by the door; a large painting of several Kharemoughis picnicking under the trees became a threedy screen full of arguing men. She nodded toward the mounds of red and purple tapestry cushions, the oases of low wooden tables inlaid with gold and amethyst. “Here you are. The servos will in and out be ... in case you anything need. And now I hope you’ll me excuse; I’m going over the tax data for Father, and it’s a dreadful project. He’ll you join, just as soon as he can.” She left them alone with the declaiming debaters on the wall.

  “My, my.” Cress folded his arms, wheezed indignantly. “

  “Make yourselves at home; steal some silverware.” Family ties meant something on Big Blue. All my parents—”

  “Now, Cress.” Elsevier shook her head at him. “I’ve only met the girl—the woman—twice, once when she was eight, and once at TJ’s funeral. She can’t have heard much good about any of us in between. And you know how the highborns are about—” she glanced down at herself, “mixed marriages.”

  Cress shook his head back at her, nudged a table leg with his sandal. “This’s fine workmanship, Elsie,” loudly. “We could four digits for a couple of those stones upstairs get.”

  She hissed disapprovingly. “Control yourself. Moon?”

  Moon started, turned back from the window.

  “Didn’t I tell you it was beautiful here?”

  Moon nodded, smiling, without the words to say how beautiful.

  “Do you think you could stay, and be a sibyl here?”

  Moon’s smile faded by halves. She shook her head, moved slowly back into the room and settled onto a pile of cushions. Elsevier’s eyes followed her, but she couldn’t answer them. I can’t answer any question! She pointed at the screen, changing the subject, as Elsevier sat down beside her. “Why are they angry?”

  Elsevier peered at the gesticulating speakers, concentrating. “Why, that’s old PN Singalu, the Unclassified’s political leader. Bless me, I didn’t know he was still alive. It’s a parliamentary debate; there’s an interpreter, so that temperamental young dandy on the right must be a highborn. They can’t speak directly to each other, you know.”

  “I thought the Unclassifieds didn’t have any rights.” Moon watched the two men face each other burning-eyed from their podiums, across the neutral ground of the droning, shaven-headed interpreter. They ran over the tail of his words to answer each other, while he repeated what they had already heard, like children arguing. Looking at them she couldn’t tell one from the other, wondered how they knew for themselves which one was the inferior.

  “Oh, they have some rights, including the right to representation; it’s simply that everything not specifically given to them is specifically forbidden. And they aren’t allowed enough representatives to change the laws. But they keep trying.”

  “How can they run a government at all; I thought the Prime Minister was out in space?”

  “Oh, he’s on another level entirely.” Elsevier waved a hand. “He and the Assembly represent Kharemough, but they represent the days when Kharemough was first making contact with the other worlds that became the Hegemony.” Kharemough had thought that it was rebuilding the Old Empire in microcosm, with the help of the Black Gate. But in fact they came nowhere near the Old Empire’s technological sophistication, and they had learned in time that real control over several subject worlds wasn’t practical without a faster than-light star drive Their dreams of domination were swallowed up in the vastness of space; until they could regain a star drive they would have to be content with economic dominance, a kind the rest of the Hegemony was willing to support. But the Prime Minister and his floating royalty continued as they had begun, a symbol of unity, although not the unity of empire. They traveled from world to world, accepting homage as virtual gods—seemingly ageless, protected by time dilation and the water of life from the precession of the universe outside.

  “And they’re always welcome, of course; because, ironically, they’re no
thing but a harmless fantasy.” The voices of the debaters, and the tempers behind them, had been rising while Elsevier spoke; her sudden gasp echoed the stricken silence that suddenly fell, half a continent away, in the hall of government.

  Moon saw the look of wonder that spread over the worn-leather face of the old man ... and the utter disbelief on the face of the arrogant young Tech. Even the interpreter lost his glaze, sat openmouthed between them, looking left to right. “What?” she said, and Cress echoed it.

  “He didn’t wait; he didn’t wait for the interpreter!” Elsevier pressed her hands against her cheeks with a cry of delight. “Oh, look at that old man! He worked all his life for a moment like this, knowing it would never come ... And now it has.” There was a rising sigh of noise from the hall; the young Tech turned and walked off camera like a man caught in a trance. Someone wearing gray robes and a mantle of authority took his place, calling for order.

  “What happened?” Moon leaned forward, hugging her knees with absorbed tension.

  “The Tech forgot himself,” Elsevier breathed. “He addressed Singalu directly—as an equal—instead of through an interpreter. And in front of millions of witnesses!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Singalu is now a Technician!” Elsevier laughed. “One way to rise in rank on Kharemough is for someone from a higher level to raise you to it, by addressing you as an equal before witnesses. And that’s what happened.”

  “What if Singalu did it? Would the Tech become Unclassed?” Moon watched the wiry, feather-haired old man clutch the podium, weeping unashamedly, grinning through his tears. She felt her own throat tighten; beside her Elsevier wiped at her eyes.

  “No, no, the Tech would merely have had him arrested ...” Elsevier broke off as the man in gray crossed the platform to Singalu and embraced him stiffly, offered congratulations face to face. “Oh, if only TJ could have this moment seen, this shared—”

  “And would he equally in the dark moment share, when the young man who it caused home tonight goes and poison takes?”

  “KR?” They turned together toward the voice at the door. Moon saw a once-tall man, stooping now under the weight of years—even though Kharemoughis held off old age more skillfully than any people who didn’t possess the water of life. She blinked, looked at him again, but a second look did not remove the brown parchment of his skin, and even his loose caftan could not disguise all the marks of age. But this was TJ’s younger brother ... how could he have aged so badly?

  “Yes, KR,” Elsevier sat back, smoothing her skirts. “He would that moment also share. Even though the young fool brought it on himself; even though you people take ‘death before dishonor’ far too lightly. Do you share in old Singalu’s joy, too?” The familiar thou did not replace the formal you with Aspundh, either.

  He smiled, on the edge of good-natured laughter. “Yes, I do. He’s himself both smart and capable proven, over the years—and this proves again that our system for intelligence and initiative selects; despite all that TJ did it upside down to turn, promoting every lowborn who at him smiled.”

  “KR, how can you that say? You know the highborns their purity like virgins protect! No one would your father raise up, one of the most brilliant minds of his generation.”

  “But I’ve raised up been.” He shrugged benignly. “My father was satisfied; he knew it would come, in time.”

  “When there was enough credit in the bank to pay for adopting some respectable ancestors,” Cress said.

  Aspundh’s expression remained placid; Moon guessed that he did not speak Tiamatan. “It’s a highly scientific structuring of society, perfectly suited to our technological orientation. And it works—it raised us up out of the chaos of the pre space era forever. It’s us a millennium of stable progress given.”

  “Of stagnation, you mean.” Elsevier frowned.

  He gestured indignantly. “You can still that say, after living on the most advanced world in the Hegemony?”

  “Technically advanced. Socially you’re hardly better than On dinee.”

  He sighed. “Why do I feel that I’ve this conversation before had?”

  Elsevier lifted her hands. “Forgive me, KR—I didn’t come politics to argue, or your time or mine to waste. I’ve to you in your apolitical capacity come; and I’ve brought someone who your guidance needs.” She got to her feet, drew Moon up from the cushions.

  Moon stood numbly, staring as KR Aspundh came forward on slippered feet; staring at the darkly gleaming trefoil suspended on his chest. “A sibyl! He can’t be!”

  He stopped, with a solemn nod. “Ask, and I will answer.”

  Elsevier reached up and unfastened the enameled collar, slipped it from Moon’s throat, uncovering the matching tattoo. “Your sister in spirit. Her name is Moon.”

  Moon’s hands flew to her throat; she turned away, hiding the sign of her failed inspiration as though she had been caught naked in his presence. But Elsevier turned her back firmly, lifted her chin until she looked into his eyes again.

  “You honor my house,” Aspundh bent his head to her. “Forgive me if my behavior has you disappointed, and made you ashamed that you came.”

  “No.” Moon dropped her eyes again, spoke awkwardly in Sandhi. “You have not. I’m not ... I’m not a sibyl. Not here, this is not my world.”

  “Our vision is not by time or space limited; thanks to the miracle of the Old Empire’s science.” He came forward, searching her face as he came. “We can anywhere answer, any time ... but you can’t. You’ve tried, and failed.” He stopped before her, gazing evenly into her astonished eyes. “Anyone could that much see; it doesn’t any special insight take. Now why? That’s the question you must for me answer. Sit down now, and tell me where you come from.” He lowered himself onto the cushions, using a tabletop for leverage.

  Moon sat down, facing him across the table; Elsevier filled in the circle with Silky and Cress. “I came from Tiamat.”

  “Tiamat!”

  A nod. “And now the Lady no longer speaks through me, because I left my—my promises unkept.”

  “The “Lady?”“ He glanced at Elsevier.

  “The Sea Mother, a goddess. Maybe I’d better how we came to be here explain, KR.” She pressed her hands together, leaning forward, and told him how it had happened. Moon saw a furrow deepen between Aspundh’s white brows, but Elsevier was not watching. “We couldn’t her back take, and we needed an astrogator through the Gate to get. Because Moon was a sibyl, I—I used her,” a slight emphasis on used. “She had only just a sibyl become, and since then she hasn’t into Transfer been able to go.” The fingers twined, twisted.

  A high-albedo mechanical servant appeared in the doorway, moved to Aspundh’s shoulder with a tray of tall glasses. He nodded, and it set the drinks down on the table. “Will there anything else be, sir?”

  “No.” He waved it away with a hint of impatience. “You mean you her in Transfer for hours left, unprepared? My gods, that’s the kind of irresponsible act I’d of TJ expect! It’s a wonder she’s not a vegetable.”

  “Well, what were they supposed to do?” Cress interrupted angrily. “Let the Blues us take? Let me die?”

  Aspundh looked at him, expressionless. “You consider her sanity a fair trade.”

  Cress’s gaze dropped to the trefoil at Aspundh’s chest, moved to Moon’s tattooed throat, but not to meet her eyes. He shook his head.

  “I do.” Moon watched Cress’s profile soften as she spoke the words. “It was my duty. But I—I wasn’t strong enough.” She took a sip from the tall, frosted glass in front of her; the apricot-colored liquid effervesced inside her mouth, making her eyes tear.

  “Since you’re me this now telling, I would you call one of the strongest-minded—or luckiest—human beings I’ve ever known.”

  “Am I?” Moon cupped her hands against the soothing burn of the cold glass. “Then when will I stop being afraid back into the darkness to go? When I feel it over me start to come, the Tran
sfer—it’s like dying inside.” Another swallow, her eyes blurred. “I hate the darkness!”

  “Yes, I know.” Aspundh sat silently for a moment. “Elsevier, will you for me translate? I think it important will be that Moon every word perfectly understands.”

  Elsevier nodded, and began to give Moon the words in Tiamatan as Aspundh spoke again: “Tiamat is—undeveloped. Do you understand where you go when you’re thrown into the darkness? Do you understand why sometimes you see another world instead?”

  Elsevier shook her head at Aspundh as she finished. “That’s why I her to you brought.”

  Moon looked toward the window, searching the air. “The Lady chooses ...”

  “Ah. So on your world your goddess is in charge—or you’ve always believed that she is. What would you say if I told you that your visions weren’t a gift from the gods, but a legacy of the Old Empire?”

  Moon realized that she had been holding her breath, let it out suddenly. “Yes! I mean, I—I expected it. Everyone here knows I’m a sibyl; how could they know? You’re a sibyl; and you’ve never heard of the Lady.” She had long ago stopped seeing the Sea Mother literally, a beautiful woman with seaweed hair, clad in spume, rising from the waves in a mer-drawn shell. But even the formless, elemental force she had sometimes felt touch her soul would not have left Her element or journeyed so far. If in fact she had ever even felt anything, beyond her own longing to feel ... “You have so many gods, you off worlders She was too numbed by loss and change to feel one more blow. “Why do you have so many?”

  “Because there are so many worlds; each world has at least one, and usually many, of its own. “My gods or your gods,” they say, ‘who knows which are the real ones?” So we worship them all, just to be sure.”